Theme for English B

“Theme for English B” is free-verse and written in the persona of a young Black college student living in Harlem in the late 1940s. It is also jazz poetry. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines this poetic form as “thriv[ing] on the artful balance between discipline and freedom, silence and noise, and presence and absence of notation. The white space beyond and between lines informs pacing within the poem.” Hughes includes some rhyme in “Theme for English B,” but the scheme is irregular, or spontaneous, like jazz improvisation.

The poem’s structure involves a repetition of the number five. There are five stanzas total. The first five lines of the poem are from the teacher (the teacher’s dialogue tag and writing assignment). The next stanza’s 10 lines can be broken up into five lines for the speaker’s reaction to the assignment and five lines for the description of his journey home. The fourth stanza, the assignment itself, is 25 lines, or five times five. Five is a common chord progression in jazz harmony (two-five-one), and jazz musicians say “take five” to mean take a break.

Furthermore, the white space changes when the assignment changes subjects.